Eurasia note #76 - U.S. Ramps Up Sanctions Effort

Israel boosts Central Asian ties seeking to offset Saudi-Iran rapprochement

Apr 26, 2023

Treasury turns screw on Kazakhstan for boosting exports to Russia
Israel launches Central Asian drive to re-isolate Iran
U.S. issues warnings not to touch its nukes and biolabs in Sudan and Ukraine
Russia protests U.S. denial of visas to journalists on Lavrov’s UN visit
Bosnian Serbs declare intention to secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina
Flashpoint Africa: Sudan’s generals spark civil war; Europe eyes Sahel

See Plague, War, Famine... Africa Next: As war in Ukraine runs its course, the chaos makers may be shifting their focus (May 31, 2022)

(About 2,200 words or 10 minutes of your company. Don’t forget to use the search function — click top left on the MC logo, scroll down to the second magnifying glass.)

Tbilisi, Apr 26, 2023

The United States may impose sanctions on Kazakhstan for aiding Russia.

Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Elizabeth Rosenberg flew to Kazakhstan on Monday. The press was seeded with information that, by the end of 2022, Kazakhstan had increased the supply of goods to Russia by 25 per cent. It allegedly became a parallel importer, trading in 10s of billions of dollars.

Such trading carries risks, said Rosenberg, an adviser on terrorism and financial crimes (for that is her title), who reports to Treasury Secretary and former head of the Federal Reserve private central bank, Janet Yellen.

The U.S. Treasury concedes that only about 30 countries support sanctions against Russia. Verily they control more than 50 per cent of mammon, quoth the Treasury, but clearly they do not represent the conscience of most people. [1]

Hungary and Serbia, for example, are planning a pipeline to supply Russian oil from the Druzhba pipeline through Hungarian territory to Serbian consumers, according to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.

Rosenberg and her boss, Brian Nelson, plan to visit 20 countries to put on the squeeze, and to discuss “enforcement priorities at all levels of the supply chain.” Banks in Austria, Italy, Germany, and France received a “manual” to curb sanctions violations, Reuters reported, citing a statement from the US Treasury.

Apparently Kazakhstan has ramped up the export of washing machines to Russia — almost 100 thousand units in 2022, from nothing in 2021. Quite how that contributes to the war effort is unclear — unless Russian troops are not dying in large numbers and still need their uniforms cleaned.

Semiconductors from Kazakhstan also increased, reaching $3.7 million.

In other sanctions news, Russia has noticed “practically no result” from a United Nations deal to export grain and fertilizer from Russia, according to its foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. Without progress, it is unlikely to continue cooperating after May.

Lavrov also criticised the U.S. for denying visas to Russian journalists traveling to the United Nations to mark Russia’s chairmanship of the Security Council.

BRICS will meet in South Africa on Jun 2-3 to consider new members to the informal economic alliance which effectively brings together China’s Belt and Road Initiative with Russia’s Eurasian Economic Community. Almost 20 additional nations have expressed interest. Saudi Arabia and Iran have applied.

The BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) was launched in the early 2000s by Goldman Sachs as a marketing strategy to sell stocks and emerging markets funds but — life imitating art — became an alternative platform for business and now currencies.

Eye-ran

Since the diplomatic success of China and Russia in salving relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the U.S. and Israel have launched a mission in the region.

Last week Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen visited Azerbaijan, following the opening an of an Azeri embassy in Tel Aviv on Mar 29, the first embassy of a Shi’ite Muslim nation in the country.

Previously Cohen had said the two countries had “agreed to form a unified front in the face of Iran.”

Israel buys about 30 per cent of its oil from Azerbaijan, and aims to expand trade currently limited to $200 million annually. Cohen led a large delegation that included 30 companies that operate in the fields of homeland security, cyber security, water issues and agriculture, including representatives from the Foreign Ministry’s Foreign Affairs Export Institute. Over 100 meetings were scheduled between the various companies and local counterparts and government officials, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Next, Israel’s foreign minister went on to Turkmenistan and opened Israel’s first embassy in the country.

Cotton eye Joe

It is the first time an Israel foreign minister has visited Turkmenistan since Shimon Peres in 1994, one year after Israel and Turkmenistan established diplomatic relations.

Turkmenistan has lots of gas, but less water, and has a problem with salinity. The gas-rich nation disputes with Iran the ownership of some gas deposits under the Caspian sea, and is also accused by Uzbekistan of using more than its fair share of water. The Turkmen cotton industry is the main culprit.

Turkmenistan’s trade with Israel is limited to about $8 million but foreign minister Cohen spoke of opportunities in “agriculture, water management, economy and energy cooperation, border protection and regional security, cyber technology and education.”

The longtime former president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, is now replaced by his son Serdar as head of state.

Iran-Azerbaijan tensions

“Iran is highly concerned about the possibility of border changes in the region—namely, the establishment of the Zangezur transit corridor via Armenia’s Syunik province and linking Azerbaijan with Turkey. This corridor would eventually fence off Tehran from Armenia, de facto isolating Iran from cargo and energy transit through the region. In this regard, Tehran strongly believes that the strengthening of the Azerbaijani-Turkish-Israeli axis will significantly limit its influence over extended “sleeper cells,” which were reportedly created by Iran on Azerbaijani soul in the past three decades (Times of Israel, April 6).” Source: Jamestown Foundation.

Tensions were underlined by the attempted assassination of an Azerbaijani MP and critic of Iran, Fazil Mustafa, in March. Two arrested suspects are said to be Shia muslims with ties to Iran (Source News AZ). This month Azerbaijan expelled four Iranian diplomats and arrested a pro-Iraninan mullah.

Despite the softening of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, it does not mean all swords have been buried across the region.

Spilt milk

Then there’s Armenia’s souring relations with Russia — literally, after Russia banned imports of Armenian dairy products because they contain Iranian milk.

Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s agricultural agency, has a reputation for being over zealous, and often greying the line between food safety and politics.

This goes to show that for all that talk of kumbayah, there are plenty of stones being thrown within the BRICS region. Armenia is a member of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization but prime minister Nikol Pashinian’s government feels it has not received sufficient Russian support in its argument with Azerbaijan. Earlier this year Earlier this year, Yerevan canceled a CSTO military exercise planned in Armenia.

(Some pleasant postcard images of Armenia and Georgia to be found here: https://www.strategicanalysis.sk/the-caucasus-brief-12/)

Bosnia bother

In Bosnia the authorities of the Republika Srpska declared it wants to exit peacefully from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).

As we noted 18 months ago, (Eurasia Note #16 - Russia Firm On Ukraine — Bosnia crisis next? (Jan 11, 2022))

The leader of the country’s Serbs, Milorad Dodik, wants greater protections and rights — and says they should be ceded by the state, which also represents Muslim Bosniak and Bosnian Croat populations. In Dec 2021 the parliament of the Serb Republic in Bosnia and Herzegovina voted to seize powers from the state level. [2]

These include changes to Bosnia's tax system, judiciary and army. The European Union High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Christian Schmidt fears this could tear up the agreement that settled the war of the former Yugoslavia in 1995.

One topic that inflamed Serb passions was a law on genocide denial, imposed by former High Representative Valentin Inzko. Serbs and many outsiders question accounts of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. His replacement, a former German agriculture minister Christian Schmidt, perpetuates the failure of the Dayton peace agreement to resolve the issue of property ownership in a fractured state in which many people were displaced — and in which the Kosovo government claims state ownership of many Yugoslav-era socially-owned enterprises.

At the same time the unelected Council of Europe accepted Kosovo’s application for membership, despite its opt-out from the European Convention on Human Rights due to its blood feud with Serbia.

Dodik, as Republika Srpska’s most prominent political leader, responded by rejecting all laws passed by high representatives and threatened to create the republic’s own judiciary, along with tax authority, army and border police.

What of Ukraine?

Ukrainian lawmakers hope to raise a meagre $400m, at best, in a fire-sale of major enterprises in fertilizer production, utilities, smelters, and an insulin maker, Bloomberg writes.

Investors, on the other hand, could earn 20 times what they put in, according to Rustem Umerov, head of the state property fund, in a “one of a kind emergency market.”

Ukraine is joined by its African brother Sudan where there is a “high bio-hazard risk” after a laboratory fell to military in-fighting, says the World Health Organization.

Warring parties seized a laboratory in Sudan’s capital Khartoum holding measles and cholera pathogens and other hazardous materials, the WHO said on Tuesday, the report coming from Reuters.

The U.S. is also operating “sensitive nuclear technology” in Ukraine as well as the biolabs. The U.S. has warned Russian authorities not to touch it — what could it be other than nuclear weapons?

So the U.S. has sensitive bio and nuclear weaponry in Ukraine and labs in Sudan: who would have guessed?

But let’s focus on the important things: cancel culture. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra has dropped Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev from its porgram at the Lincoln Center.

The mid May recital will no longer include Dmitri Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. Instead concertgoers will endure a work by Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov — though Prokofiev’s Third Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto so far remain in the programme.

Stalin’s greatest achievement, according to the author and cultural scholar E Michael Jones, was to tell Shostakovich to stop writing Bolshevik formalism and bequeath us his majestic legacy. Are Bolsheviks back in the saddle at the Lincoln Ceneter?

His indiosyncratic view is that the Bolshies were manipulated to create the response of National Socialism, just as we see critical race theory reviving segregation. Last week’s spring madness of high jinx and teen violence in Chicago can be read as a provocation intended to beckon a response, if not a clampdown.

People are led to identify with their oppressor before he destroys them — a dialectic that is intended to promote the rise of a fascist racial, or transhuman, uniformity. Say it ain’t so — but what do we witness?

Military latest

Ukraine’s long-awaited spring offensive has yet to launch, though the propaganda offensive is already underway: claims that Ukraine has crossed the Dnieper river and established a bridgehead on the eastern side, aiming for Kherson, are unsubstantiated.

Russian forces claim to have killed dozens of Ukrainian troops by artillery on Krasniy-Liman, and hundreds in South Donetsk and Zaporozhye region.

We are now almost in May. The question is when Ukraine’s counter offensive will be ready for launch. The leaked Pentagon documents suggest training of Ukrainian forces to use Western equipment is behind schedule. Those who were trained may have been destroyed in the Bakhmut offensive, and late last year in Kherson and Kharkov regions.

The longer it delays, be better prepared the Russians will be to receive them.

The slow arrival of air defence equipment such as the U.S. Patriot shield does nothing to help Ukraine in the air, for Russia has its own anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems.

In Sudan rival military generals are taking the country to the brink of civil war, The Russian private military contractor, Wagner Group, denied it was operating in the east African country. Western diplomats (little different to the mockingbird media nowadays for they gather little information directly) stenographed that Wagner was involved in informal gold mining, among other activities.

See our report from last May: Africa’s turn

Their focus is the Sahel region of Africa, where Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland denounced not just Daesh, but Russia.

Other countries on the continent are wary of offering military help to Mali, for fear that jihadists will make them a target. So Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group is fighting rebels, in return for a share of the hydrocarbon riches — and not just there. Sunni Muslim groups on the one hand, and those allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, are expanding as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and Turks respectively, join the treasure hunt.

The U.S. is using its weight to deny Russian companies like Lukoil and Rosneft, but there is a reason that Russians get a welcome, writes Beatriz de León Cobo. [3]

“A section of civil society in the various Sahelian countries, especially those ruled by military juntas (Guinea Conakry, Mali and Burkina Faso), supports the governments having military relations with Russia or its private military companies, especially after their perceived failure of Western international operations.”

The recent review of Britain’s military has singled out the Sahel. A target requiring intervention or at least responsibility to protect (known in the intervention business as R2P), it’s likely just as likely to concern what’s below ground as above.

Africa is never far from the minds of the globalist planners and it seems as if their various projects could converge on the continent.

See Plague, War, Famine... Africa Next: As war in Ukraine runs its course, the chaos makers may be shifting their focus (May 31, 2022)

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